It’s the end of November and the multitrack studio at the university is getting busy and booked up due to deadlines fast approaching. This week we were due to track the vocal tracks for the three songs we had, so we decided to use the ADR booth in the sound theatre to record O’Brien’s vocal takes which we had done before for a recording in our second year and got very good results. We also managed to use the Neumann U87 microphone to record the vocals which was placed a foot away from O’Brien with a pop shield in between to get a clean recording of our clients voice. The M-Audio preamps in the sound theatre are brilliant for tracking dialogue and sound amazing when used to record vocals and we got some fantastic results whilst using this setup for the session. The session began with O’Brien recording all the main vocal tracks for his songs after he had warmed his voice up using his exercises.

O’Brien ready to roll

After we had recorded all the main vocal tracks without any problems, we decided to layer the harmonies for the songs. After a chat about the best way to do things and what the song would benefit from, we decided on doing three harmonies of the same parts and then when it came to mixng the tracks we would pan two harmonies left and right and then the third through the middle. This is a popular production trick that makes use of the stereo field in songs and creates a lot of space within the track. Four hours into the session we felt as a group that we had enough vocal tracks to take to the mixing stage and I also suggested to O’Brien the idea of getting in touch with some marketing students about creating a sleeve and promo photos for the EP. O’Brien, Philip and I sat down after recording to listen to the three roughly mixed tracks and felt confident we had enough parts to take to the mixing stage. The only job left at the end of the session was to return the Neumann microphone back to security to keep it safe over night.

Philip Rollett returning the Neumann microphone back to security